It’s a 1-day listing (since they don’t have a 2-day option). If you want to make an offer below the $40 minimum, leave a comment in this post and once the auction expires I’ll be likely willing to consider it.

Let me know if you’re interested by leaving a comment in the post. For longtime readers (you know who you are) I might be willing to cut you an even better deal and consider partial ticket offers right away. Others I’ll wait until I’m closer to the game date before accepting an offer for part of the seats.

Let me know if you’re interested for Webber State by Tuesday morning. I’ll put them on eBay later in the day.

Which means I’m still looking and also open to more flexible arrangements. Want just specific games? Want the whole year? Heck, even want to propose something that you don’t want to move on until later… make me an offer (or proposal), even one significantly below face value. As long as it isn’t a joke of an offer, there’s a good chance I will accept.

So, if you want to take your family to a Bears game and you want to do it on the cheap but with pretty good seats, particularly from a logistics stand point, I’m your man. Leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

I’m ready to make a pretty dang good deal for the right person/family…

The schedule for next season came out and I can not make 3 of the 6 games:

USC on Sat. 9/23

Arizona on Sat. 10/21

Oregon State on Sat. 11/4

(UPDATE: Also looking like Webber St. on 9/11 is trouble for me unless it is a night game)

I’m looking for someone who’d like to buy my tickets for those game. The season tickets include a parking pass in the Lower Hearst parking lot. The full package of tickets (which is 2 adult and 5 children’s tickets in section C) are $1250 for the season. So half would be $625. I’m willing to sell it for $400.

Why do that when you could just buy single tickets for the games you want? In addition to the discounted price, you should also want it for the same reason I want to cut a deal (as opposed to giving up my season tickets)… I’ve got great seats! Well, there’s one caveat, great seats for the cheap part of the stadium. I really think my seats are the *VERY BEST* seats in the *entire* region that used to be called the “Gold Zone”. (The north endzone cheap seats which goes from section CC to in the northwest corner of the endzone to section W in the northeast corner of the enzone). Here’s why:

We’re in the 1st two rows above the concourse (4 seats in front, 3 seats immediately behind). That means you get more leg room (the 1st row has a full extra foot of leg room, plus no one sitting in front of you to encroach on your leg room).

Being in the 1st two rows above the concourse means every trip to the bathroom or concessions only requires navigating a handful of steps.

We’re on the isle, which further makes it easy to get in and out to get food or go to the bathroom.

Just above the concourse is a great height to get a good view of the field. High enough you have depth perspective but not so high/far you feel disconnected from the game.

Section C is the furthest west section that has the “above the concourse” extra leg room, so you’ve got the perspective of being more in the corner versus straight down from the endzone. This also improves visibility and depth perspective. (Seats in the middle of the endzone it will see “huge running holes” open to go for long yardage but end up being deceptively short runs because you have no side of the field perspective.)

Being on the west side means the sun is behind you, not in your face.

The point is, there’s not a single set of seats in the “Gold Zone” that equal that set of benefits. Yes, it’s not the best seats on the 50 yard line. There’s no denying there are much better seats in the expensive sections like the ESP area. But you’re not going to get a half season’s worth of tickets for even two people, much less the seven I’m offering, for $400.

Now, if you’re not a family with at least a couple kids, this probably isn’t the deal for you. There are only 2 adult tickets (plus 5 children’s). To be clear about the kids tickets, they don’t check youth vs. adult tickets at the turnstiles. I always use a children’s ticket just to re-verify they don’t care and nobody has ever said a word about it when scanning my ticket and letting me through. However, I don’t think it is ethical to buy these tickets from me if you intend to use them all for adults. I’ve made my peace with using a number of children’s tickets for adults at the night games that are too late for the kids, but only because it’s ridiculous how much they jerk us around with game times. I’d ask that you intend to do the same thing: You plan to use your children’s tickets for children and will only resort to using them for adults if the schedule or weather makes it unreasonable to bring the kids.

Thus if you are a family with at least a couple kids, I think I’m offering a pretty good deal, particularly considering you get the “good” half of the tickets (no FCS game and the headliner of USC).

Are you interested? Please leave a comment on the post (put your e-mail in the e-mail field (which isn’t published)) and I’ll get back to you. If you’re not willing to pay that much, we can discuss that after I contact you. I might be willing to take less (however, too little and I might also just not renew my tickets or sell them as the games come up). I might also be willing to also let you have the Mississippi State game (or split them?) if you’d like to pay more to have that game as well. (Update: I might just throw in the Webber St. game for free once they schedule a time (usually in June).) Heck, I might even be willing to let the whole season go and still pay a small portion so I keep the seats for future years (you pay $1000?). Point being, I’m pretty flexible in all ways except I need to sell all 3 of the above mentioned games as part of the deal and I need to make the deal before February 20th when season ticket renewals end. Let me know what suits your fancy.

I’m willing to give away my 7 tickets (a row of 3 behind a row of 4) for “free” with one condition: That you are willing to mail me half of the Bobbleheads you get (so if you take 2 tickets, you mail me 1. If you take 4, you mail me 2. If you request an odd number, I’ll let you keep the “split baby”.

Well it took up until the last day, but the finally sold out the Nevada game. About time. I guess not everyone is as excited about tomorrow’s game as I am. I’m seriously bouncing off the walls here. My kids think I’m nuts. 🙂

OK, now that I’ve got my 2 lamenting posts out of the way, on to bigger and better things…

What an exciting year we’ve got in front of us!

After giving up on the bench-back seating, I had a choice to make. Do I sit in effectively the same section as I’d had for all of my years as a season ticket holder or do I “downgrade” to the Gold Zone?

Before the construction, we’d had some pretty special seats in DD: Rows 44 and 45, seats 1-3 in both rows. Obviously 1-3 is on the isle, but more importantly, 44 was the first row above the concourse, so there was nobody in front of us and we had a large platform where the kids could walk around. It had a minor downside that people on their way to and from their seats liked to stop on the platform when a play was happening, obscuring our view, but other than that, they were awesome seats, particularly with young children. The seats on the other side of the isle in E would have been even better because they wouldn’t have had the people obstruction, but our seats were still pretty dang good, all things considered.

But again, by the time my selection time came around, seats like that were nowhere to be found in DD. However, I could have gotten a set of seats in the middle of the first row above the handicap section in J (the equivalent of DD on the other side of the 50). Those were pretty good, but we very much liked having two rows. We put the kids in front of us and my wife and I could sit next to each other. With 6 in a row, we’d inevitably end up with them in the middle and each other barely within shouting distance.

Plus, my costs were going to go way up, at least for that year. $1200 down the drain plus the $1800 for 6 seats (OUCH!). We were back to 6 because I’d want them for future years and there’s no reason to compromise down to 4 as I wouldn’t have to make such big donations in future years. But it put a pinch on this year for sure.

But then, while browsing around, I found the miracle I was hoping for.

In section C, in the Gold Zone, the first two rows on the isle, the first rows above the handicapped section/concourse area, were available. 4 in the bottom row, 3 in the one above it. EUREKA!

Sure, section C gave me a bit of pause, but it was offset by the cost. See, for those not in the know, the Gold Zone has not only cheaper prices for adults, it’s the only section with kids pricing. While the $75 savings for the adults was nice, the BIG win was the $175 savings for each kid. With 4 kids, that’s a lot of savings! All told, I would go from $1800 down to $950.

My lone concern was that, as I had learned in 2011, night games provide a challenge if you buy kids seats. I won’t bring a 8 year old, much less a 3 year old, to a 7 PM game, for obvious reasons. And since nobody else will either, when you’ve got kid’s seats, all of a sudden, you’ve got worthless tickets. With the new TV arrangement I expecting plenty of night games, so it was a real concern.

So I e-mailed my very friendly and helpful University donation rep to ask him if there was any way on a game-by-game basis to upgrade children’s seats to adults. He informed me that all I have to do is take the tickets to the ticket office or the ticket window at the game (or a prior game), give them the children’s tickets and pay them the difference, and they’ll issue adult tickets in exchange.

SWEET! That was the final domino to seal my decision.

All of this went down about 3-4 days before my selection window. So I spent the next half week logging in every 15 minutes hoping “my” seats wouldn’t be taken. I have a firm “no praying about sports” rule, but if I didn’t, there would have been rosaries galore!

And my hopes and wishes came true, my selection time came and the seats I desired were still available. HOORAY!

But what’s this? I select my 6 seats, 3 in the front row and 3 behind them on the isle and the system balks. You can’t leave a single seat orphaned, it informs me.

ARG!?!

Thinking quick on my feet, I try multiple combinations to see what it will allow. There’s no way to get just 6 of the 7 available seats. BUT, it will allow me take all 7 of course, and being in the Gold Zone, that 7th seat can be a kid’s seat and only costs an extra $125. Being a devout Catholic, an extra kid’s seats is at most 28 days away from potentially being needed, so what the heck, I’ll take 7. In the mean time, we’ll get some extra butt space. My wife and I can spread out and take the 3 seats for two of us in the upper row and the 4 kids can sit in the front 4 seats.

(BTW, it seems to me that this is an excellent strategy for those desiring more butt-space. For only $125 a season you can buy an extra kid’s seat that you never intend on using and allow yourself to spread out.)

And that’s what we did: 2 adult seats and 1 kid’s seat in the upper row and 4 kid’s seats in the lower row. The more I think about it, the happier I am. For future years I’ve saved myself a considerable sum and for this year I mostly offset the $1200 donation. I “baby proofed” my seat needs for the next couple years, not needing to move if I ever need an additional seat. And, I managed to get seats nearly as nice as I did back in DD pre-construction. True, there be no platform to walk around on, but we also won’t have the obstruction issue either and we’ll still get the extra legroom of having a first row seat.

Needless to say, I’m happy with my seats and I get more excited about opening day in a beautiful new stadium.

One of reasons I didn’t do a lot of blogging late in the off-season was I was pretty ticked about how things went down in regards to donating to the athletic program. Before I get into my story, I want to be clear that I believe what happened was more my fault than the University’s and I wouldn’t want anyone to not donate to our Bears because of this post, assuming it’s otherwise the right thing to do.

Think of this more as a cautionary tale to make sure you’re donating for the right reasons.

It all started in December when all of us season ticket holders got e-mails about donating before the end of the year to increase our priority points. Being a guy with ridiculously low points (12 at the time) despite having being a season ticket holder for every year but one (which really hurt my points) since 1999, I decided to look into it.

See, up until now, I’ve always sat in the non-donor reserved section. But the possibility of sitting in the increased leg-room bench-back section was pretty enticing. I’ve traditionally bought 6 seats, running $300 a seat for most seasons or $1800 a year. With the latest baby being a girl and a wife who doesn’t like the games as much as I do, the thought was we’d get 4 seats in the bench-back section. $1200 for the seats ($300 x 4) and $800 for the required donation ($200 x 4) only ended up being $200 more than we used to pay. Then we could mix and match who went to which games: Sometimes me and the boys. Sometimes my wife and I and another couple (night games). Sometimes the whatever 4 from the family who could go when the kids have commitments.

And as with all purchasing decisions, there’s always the upgrade possibilities. Since at the $1200 ‘Big C’ donation level one gets a free parking pass that would otherwise cost me $150, and other benefits like earlier selection times for single-game tickets (and hopefully bowl tickets), it was worth the extra $250 in donation ($800 required, plus $150 for the parking is $250 less than the $1200 needed to be a ‘Big C’ donor) to get there.

I e-mailed the donation office to clarify a few things, notably that I’d get 5 extra points for an additional year of consecutive donating plus 12 points for the $1200. I also said I was interested in seats in a particular section and wanted to make sure I would be donating the right amount.

They were very nice and prompt in their reply, validated everything I asked, but gave one caveat that I ignored: “Of course this donation will not guarantee you seats in the section you’re interested in.”

“DUH!” I said. Priority points determine who picks when, right? But there’s no way all the seats would be gone I thought to myself. I could always pick seats on the opposite side of the 50 if it was overbooked where I wanted to sit.

Then came the selection period. Every day I logged in to see what was available as my day approached. And every day the number of available seats in “my” sections kept shrinking until a couple days before my selection, all that was left was seats in row 7 and below in all of the bench-back seats, on both sides of the 50, both at the $200 and the $400 donation levels.

Frankly, I was heart-broken.

There’s no way I’m going to sit that low. You just can’t see the game. Even if you’re on the 50 yard line, the lack of height takes away your depth perception in the endzones. At the 10 yard line where I’d be sitting, depth perception would be non-existent on the far side of the field. There’s just no way I’m sitting that low.

And to increase my frustration by an order of magnitude, there was this $1200 dollar donation looming over my head. It was now effectively wasted money.

Without going into too much details, it’s worth pointing out how much money $1200 is to my family. I’m a middle class guy, but with 4 kids and a stay-at-home wife (who’s awesome BTW), our budget is stretched pretty thin. We don’t own an HDTV. A 27″ tube TV from 1999 is all we’ve got. Our DirecTV subscription is a thing of the past and we’re not turning it back on for football season. We don’t have smartphone plans with the big carriers, it’s too expensive. We pay $55/month for both our cellphones and are considering cutting back further. Until the Jetta accident, we owned a ’97 Jetta and an ’02 Odyssey with no car payments. Frankly, I’d better get a raise someday soon as the insurance money for the Jetta isn’t going to pay the car payment for the new truck for very long. That or some other budgeted items are going to get the ax pretty soon, and as you can see, we’ve already cut pretty deep.

To be clear, I’m not complaining. I have a blessed and wonderful life and I wouldn’t change a thing. The tight money doesn’t inherently bother me a bit. I know that there are millions of Americans who live much more frugally and couldn’t afford even the cheapest Cal Bear tickets and the expense that goes with going to the game. People with no health insurance, no savings for retirement, things that I’m grateful to have. I’ve got no reason to REALLY complain, and I know how lucky I am in the big picture.

Nevertheless, my point is, $1200 is a BIG deal in my family. It’s a considerable percentage of our disposable income after the necessities are paid for. It’s an ‘up late for 3 or 4 nights in a row discussing it with my wife and running various budget scenarios to decide whether it is worth spending’ amount. It’s a VERY big deal.

“Well”, I told myself, “at least we’ll get some extra perks.” We got to pick our seats earlier than we otherwise would have. We’ll get a good parking spot, not one a mile away on the other side of campus. Things like good seats at the Ohio State game, seats that others may not be able to get.

Well, after talking to the rep from the donation office, it appears my additional priority points benefit should be measured in hours, not days, as to how moved me forward in the pecking order. After getting my Ohio State tickets early, it looks like everyone and their brother was able to get tickets to the game with numerous left over. And the final straw was when my parking pass arrived. I wasn’t in Underhill or somewhere similarly close. Nope, Lower Hearst. it’s only 30% closer than the lot I had last year!?!

Frankly, I got nothing of note for my $1200 (we’ll really for my $1050, as the parking pass would have been $150). Sure I get a promotional magazine in the mail now and again. I get lots of nice letters thanking us for our generosity. I guess my parking spot is a little closer. And I guess if the Bears miraculously make it to the Rose Bowl this year (more on that later), it will be worth every penny when trying to get tickets. But as far as concrete value, I didn’t get a whole lot and I’m not expecting much more in the future.

And at some level, I guess that’s OK. As you’ll see in a later post, I ended up going with some seats that as time has wore on I’ve been more and more happy with. It’s not called a DONATION for nothing. Thinking of it that way, how much should I be expecting in return?

The moral of the story is be very careful what you donate and what your expectations are for that donation. Make sure you can really afford it. Make sure you won’t be heart broken if you get very little in return. Don’t fall for the trap I fell for.

At his point, all I can do is hope the University makes remarkably good use of my donation. My son’s birthday is coming up soon and what he’s going to get from his parents kinda sucks. See, there’s this missing $1200 I could have made VERY good use of…

I bought 8 tickets for the Big Game and between by brother bailing and the late start time, I need to sell 4 of them. So not only will you get to watch the Big Game, you’ll get to do it next to my awesomeness. 🙂

We’re in section 224 about halfway up. That’s in the endzone, but let me say from experience, these seats, being mostly straight away, are a different but not bad angle. The running lanes are great to watch. On the far side of the field depth perception is a bit weak, but other than that, it’s a good place to watch a game. It’s far better than in the corner on the lower level, which I’ve had in the past.

Checking around, tickets are going for over $125 in most places, so I’m asking $100 a seat. Face value is $75. I’m willing to sell in 2 pairs or all 4 together. Let me know if you want 3 or 1 and I’ll see what else I’m offered.

Well, my date FINALLY came up. After two and a half weeks of patiently watching all the seats get grabbed up, I finally got my chance at 1:46 PM today.

The process was smooth and simple, as I expected. I have to admit this automated self-selecting system is far nicer in concept than the traditional “hope the ATO is nice to me and understands my note” system that has been used in the past. (BTW, I found the ATO to be very nice in their selection when I wrote a good note, explaining exactly what I wanted and where I was willing to compromise. The seats we’ve had for the last handful of years were great.)

Of course the seats I got were not nearly as nice as I hoped and there’s no doubt that lots of formerly high donors were snapping up cheap tickets this year, which is fully their right. There are plenty of cheap tickets left, but the good ones are all but gone. I guess that’s my penalty for not being a donor. For me, we ended up picking seats in the 2nd to highest row of section 332. We’re in the middle of the row, which wasn’t what we wanted, but I felt the slightly better location was worth it over seats in section 317 that were only two from the isle. In either case, we were going to be in the highest rows. At this point, unless I was going to pay for big-donor seats, everything was at least 2/3rds the way up the upper deck.

The lower deck was out of the question for me. They’re SO low, the sight lines are horrible, particularly from the endzone, the only place a non-donor could sit down there. Which brings me to my thought for the day:

I think the athletic department made a mistake in where they put the “reserved” seats and where they put the “blue/gold zone” seats. They should have switched them, and put the $275/seat and no discount for kids seats (the equivalent to the old reserved) on the upper deck. As I stated above, the sight-lines are better and it’s not that far from the field. It also better matches the reserved seats in that they were in the corners, not the endzones. Conversely, they should have put the $225/seat with a $75 discount for kids seats (the equivalent of the old blue/gold zone), in the endzone. They’re the cheapest seats and have always been in the endzone and again, as said above, have a worse view.

The fact that the “reserved” seats have lots of available seats and the “zone” seats are filling up fast, indicates that they got the pricing/demand curve backwards on those two. Had they got them right, and flopped their locations, I probably would have paid the extra money to sit in the “reserved” sections and gotten better seats within the same section I’m sitting in.

The good news for me is that this year’s tickets cost about half what I expected. I budgeted $2500 for 6 tickets in the annual budget and paid $1225 (plus a $100 donation so that next year I’ll have a better priority number). I ended up going with 4 adult and 2 kids tickets because there are some games, like USC as a night game, that I won’t be taking the kids to and would like to take friends to, but would also like to save some cash when I bring the 4 kids with my wife.

Good luck to those who haven’t yet had a chance to pick! Here’s a tip: I’ve you’ve got some extra dough, there’s still some GREAT big-donor seats left. 🙂

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve got 6 tickets for sale for the Oregon game at 4:30 PM on 11/13. For those of you who don’t have a big cable/satellite package, you won’t be able to see this game on TV (it’s going to be on Versus). Be there to watch the Bears take a shot at history and beating #1 for the first time in history.

And I’ve got great seats…

While I don’t have donor seats, I still think I’ve got some great seats. First of all, I’m on the isle, in two rows of 3. This helps with knee issues as the person behind you is a friend, not some random dude. Second of all, there’s no seats in front of me. We’re the first two rows above the concourse tunnel, which also gives you more room to stretch out. Add in being close to the tunnel for easy in/out access, that they’re at the right height to have good visibility across the whole field and I think they’re as of seats as you’ll find in the non-donor section. (FYI, this is section DD).

See this graphic for details:
(the blue and gold seats are mine)

I’m asking face value for the tickets: $53 each. I’d prefer to sell the block of 6 to one person but I will consider breaking it into two groups of 3 if no one is interested in the full set for the game.

E-Mail me at tickets AT excusemeformyvoice DOT com if you’re interested, or leave a comment in the comment section.